![]() “Can you leave?” my daughter said last night, as she geared up to clean the kitchen after dinner. Where she used attack me with kisses, she now flinches from any touch or proximity. But living now this mother-daughter relationship, day to day, I’m incredulous by what we’ve become. These were all the things my single father struggled to do, which made me feel singular, odd. My own died in a car accident before I was 3, so I spent my childhood longing for an ideal mother, someone to make me cereal but also to dress me neatly, to tie my hair in braids. Is the relationship between a teen daughter and her mother inevitably one of conflict? Are we just a cliché?Ĭlichés were once all I knew of mothers. “I told you not to go through my stuff,” she says when I mention the wrappers. ![]() She fills herself with all the junk I don’t want her to eat, all the junk I used to eat when I was her age. What is she feeding herself? In the pockets of her jackets, and in the crevices of her bedding, I find slippery, spent candy wrappers and empty bags of chips. Is the relationship between a teen daughter and her mother inevitably one of conflict? “But you aren’t eating and you need to eat,” I say. I’m already downstairs, in the kitchen, and on seeing her, offer breakfast. ![]() One morning early in the third year of the now times, my daughter wakes up and sits on the sofa, hair tangled, back slouched, eyes bleary. ![]()
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